From Moral Theology to Moral Philosophy : Cicero and Visions of Humanity from Locke to Hume

La 4e de couv. indique : "The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries represent a period of remarkable intellectual vitality in British philosophy, as figures such as Hobbes, Locke, Hume, and Smith attempted to explain the origins and sustaining mechanisms of civil society. Their insights continue to inform how political and moral theorists think about the world in which we live. From Moral Theology to Moral Philosophy reconstructs a debate which preoccupied contemporaries but which seems arcane to us today. It concerned the relationship between reason and revelation as the two sources of mankind's knowledge, particularly in the ethical realm: to what extent, they asked, could reason alone discover the content and obligatory character of morality? This was held to be a historical, rather than a merely theoretical question: had the philosophers of pre-Christian antiquity, ignorant of Christ, been able satisfactorily to explain the moral universe? What role had natural theology played in their ethical theories - and was it consistent with the teachings delivered by revelation? Much recent scholarship has drawn attention to the early-modern interest in two late Hellenistic philosophical traditions - Stoicism and Epicureanism. Yet in the English context, three figures above all - John Locke, Conyers Middleton, and David Hume - quite deliberately and explicitly identified their approaches with Cicero as the representative of an alternative philosophical tradition, critical of both the Stoic and the Epicurean: academic scepticism. All argued that Cicero provided a means of addressing what they considered to be the most pressing question facing contemporary philosophy: the relationship between moral philosophy and moral theology." Cover From Moral Theology to Moral Philosophy: Cicero and Visions of Humanity from Locke to Hume Copyright Contents Acknowledgements Conventions i. Dates ii. Gender iii. Names iv. Orthography v. References vi. Translations Introduction Cicero and the ‘Science of Man’ Late Hellenistic Ethics and Early Modern Philosophy A (Brief ) Note on Method 1: The Place of Cicero in Locke’s Moral Theology Introduction: Reconstructing Locke’s Cicero I. Hobbes, Grotius, and Cicero II. Locke’s Early Writings, 1659–1669 ‘Two Tracts on Government’ (c.1660–1662) Lectures on the Law of Nature (c.1663–1664) ‘De Arte Medica’ (1669) and ‘An Essay on Toleration’ (1667) III. Hedonism, Social Constraint, and Natural Law, 1669–1690 Locke’s ‘Three Laws’ Locke, Pierre Nicole, and Social Constraint From ‘Vertue’ to ‘Duty’: Locke on Moral Knowledge IV. Locke’s Paradox: The Moral Consequences of Christianity The ‘Two Provinces of Knowledge’ The Harmony of the ‘Three Laws’ in Heathen Societies The Subversion of the ‘Three Laws’ in Christian Commonwealths Locke, Stillingfleet, and Immortality Conclusion 2: Shaftesbury’s Science of Happiness Introduction Locke, Moral Theology, and the Two Traditions Self-Mastery and the Quest for the Summum Bonum Socratic Philosophy and Christian Theology Conclusion 3: Mandeville and the Construction of Morality Introduction: Mandeville’s Intellectual Development, 1714–1732 The Story of Sociability: from the Fable (1714) to Part II (1729) Honour, Christianity, and Moral Obligation Conclusion 4: At the Limits of Christian Humanism: Conyers Middleton Introduction: Placing Middleton A Letter from Rome (1729) A Letter to Waterland and the Defences (1731–1733) The History of the Life of M. T. Cicero (1741) A Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers (1749) Conclusion 5: From Moral Theology to Moral Philosophy: Hume’s Academic Scepticism Introduction: Cicero in Eighteenth-Century Scotland I. A ‘New Medium’: Hume’s Early Intellectual Development II. From Moral Theology to Moral Philosophy: Virtue and Pride III. Rewriting Cicero for a Christian Age: Hume’s Philosophy of Religion A ‘Natural History’ of Moral Theology Hume’s Two (Ciceronian) Definitions of ‘True Religion’ Conclusion Epilogue Bibliography (i) Manuscript and archival sources Bodleian Library, Oxford British Library (BL) National Archives, London (TNA) National Library of Scotland (NLS) Suffolk Public Record Office, Bury St Edmunds (SRO) (ii) Printed primary sources (i) Printed secondary works (ii) Unpublished theses Index The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries represent a period of remarkable intellectual vitality in British philosophy, as figures such as Hobbes, Locke, Hume, and Smith attempted to explain the origins and sustaining mechanisms of civil society. Their insights continue to inform how political and moral theorists think about the world in which we live. From Moral Theology to Moral Philosophy reconstructs a debate which preoccupied contemporaries but which seems arcane to us today. It concerned the relationship between reason and revelation as the two sources of mankind's knowledge, particularly in the ethical realm: to what extent, they asked, could reason alone discover the content and obligatory character of morality? This was held to be a historical, rather than a merely theoretical question: had the philosophers of pre-Christian antiquity, ignorant of Christ, been able satisfactorily to explain the moral universe? What role had natural theology played in their ethical theories - and was it consistent with the teachings delivered by revelation? Much recent scholarship has drawn attention to the early-modern interest in two late Hellenistic philosophical traditions - Stoicism and Epicureanism. Yet in the English context, three figures above all - John Locke, Conyers Middleton, and David Hume - quite deliberately and explicitly identified their approaches with Cicero as the representative of an alternative philosophical tradition, critical of both the Stoic and the Epicurean: academic scepticism. All argued that Cicero provided a means of addressing what they considered to be the most pressing question facing contemporary philosophy: the relationship between moral philosophy and moral theology."-- Provided by publisher Tim Stuart-Buttle offers a fresh view of British moral philosophy in the 17th and early 18th centuries. In this period of remarkable innovation, philosophers such as Hobbes, Locke, and Hume combined critique of the role of Christianity in moral thought with reconsideration of the legacy of the classical tradition of academic scepticism.